


Double Agent

by 51stCenturyFox



Category: Bourne Legacy (2012), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Crossover, F/M, Kidnapping, M/M, Mistaken Identity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-16 09:03:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/51stCenturyFox/pseuds/51stCenturyFox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shortly after the battle with the Chitauri in Manhattan, Clint suddenly disappears and drops off the map.</p><p>When SHIELD locates him again, he doesn't remember anything -- his job, his history, the people who were important to him -- or his name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_“We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cell phones, laptops. If it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us.”_

\- Agent Phil Coulson, on the search for Loki, the Tesseract, and a compromised Clint Barton.

 

*

Colonel Fury pulled up the footage from Nairobi again and watched avidly. “Unbelievable,” he murmured, shaking his head. He opened a comm to Maria. “Coulson’s in the building?”

“Yes,” Maria said. “Are you going to show him?”

“Mmm hmm,” Fury said, tapping a finger against his lips.

“Maybe Romanoff should be there, too,” she said, a note of _like I’ve been saying,_ in her tone.

“Soon,” Fury said. “Soon.”

*

Aaron Cross chose a seat at the end of the Shinjang bar near the air base, back to the wall, clear view of the door, 17 feet from the rear exit. Habit and conditioning.

“Sir?” asked the bartender. “You want a drink?”

“Club soda,” Aaron said. “No...Coke. With ice.” He figured he could live a little. Marta was safe in New Zealand, working at a private genetics lab after they’d spent four months in Vietnam laying low. She’d sent him a text the week before from one of the burner phones, and he’d video-chatted with her from a random internet cafe full of students in Daehangno the other day before heading for a spot where he could blend in with other westerners and all was well. Settled. Nobody was looking for them in New Zealand or in South Korea either, apparently. He’d go down to visit her in five or six months, maybe. 

He owed Marta a lot. Everything.

“No juice?” the bartender quirked an eyebrow, and waved across the narrow bar. Aaron formed fists and fought the urge to flinch and drive his elbow back sharply as he felt the seductive dig of fingertips along his ribcage, then into his thigh.

“ _I’d_ like a drink,” said the voice in his ear, and he turned his head to get a face-full of teased black hair smelling of hairspray and cigarette smoke. Of course Aaron had picked a juice bar and that meant girls hanging off him all night. “If you buy me a juice, we could talk?”

“You’re...very beautiful,” Aaron said with a smile. “But I just want a Coke right now. By myself. I have a headache.” The young woman sniffed at the brushoff and moved a couple of stools down to two cocky pilots with close-cropped hair, leaning in to laugh at a joke one of them made as he slipped a finger under one of her spaghetti straps.

He envied them, a little. Couple of buddies on a night out on the town, not a care in the world. Nobody hunting them down, free to drink too much, chat with and maybe get laid by a pretty stranger after paying the bar far too much for her drinks. 

He’d just finish his soda and shove off. Maybe back to Vietnam again. The soup was fantastic.

*

At the other end of the room, Natasha reevaluated her approach. She scrubbed at her lips and tucked her hair into a makeshift bun, eyed her backup, then approached the man just as his Coke arrived and perched on the stool next to his, pointedly ignoring him.

“Beer,” she told the bartender when he turned towards her. “You got Bud?”

“Bud, OB, Hite, Cass...” he trailed off.

“Bud,” Natasha said, slapping 5,000 won on the bar and shrugging at the man next to her when he glanced her way. There was no recognition in his eyes at all. “Just got off shift. You see a blond girl in a red shirt in here, ‘bout yay high?” She lifted a hand to the man’s ear level, and he shook his head.

“Fuck,” Natasha drawled. “Friends bagged out and the night isn’t even starting yet. I’m Nat.”

The man nodded, knocking back his drink. “Jake,” he said after he’d swallowed, and Natasha’s heart ached even as she noted the lie, if it was a conscious one.

“You a civilian? TDY?”

“Yeah,” the man replied. “Contractor.”

Vague and adequate response, Natasha thought. Every military base had tons of transient contractors. “Where you from? I’m from South Carolina. Gamecocks!” she raised her bottle in a sloshy toast and took a slug, then licked her lips. “We fuckin’ creamed Georgia yesterday. Shit was brutal. So _where_ you from?” 

“Everywhere,” the man said with a chuckle, eyes sweeping the bar. “Vegas. Uh...Nellis Air Force Base,” he added, after a pause.

“Mountain West conference sucks it. Sure I’m not the first to tell you that,” Natasha grinned, finishing her beer. She watched as the man shoved his glass to the side and shifted in his seat, and she waved the bartender back. “Another Bud, and one of them. what’s that? Rum an’ Coke? SoCo?”

“It’s just Coke,” he said, tilting the glass so the ice rattled. “But I need to get up early so...”

“Oh come on, lemme get you one, then,” Natasha pleaded. “I just made the cutoff for tech sergeant. Party’s supposed to be on me tonight.”

“Fine. Okay.” The man settled back on the stool and pushed his empty glass forward, keeping his hand around it as the barkeep shot in more cola. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Natasha said, unrolling a few more notes to pay. She fingered the syringe in her other pocket, uncapping the tip carefully, then raised her chin to the TV mounted in the corner over the man’s shoulder, high up. “You like soccer?”

“Uh, yeah, it’s alright,” he said, and she moved quickly when he turned, catching a glimpse of utter fear and horror on his face before he slumped to the bar. Natasha pulled out a wad of notes and slid them toward the bartender.

“My friend’s sick,” she said. “I need to take him out the back way.”

A pause, and then a small nod as the barkeep swept the money back, and then the SHIELD muscle she’d brought as backup helped her get the man out the rear door and into a waiting van.

He slept through the trip on the Quinjet.

*

Aaron could feel a cushioned surface beneath him; judging from the angle, it was a hospital bed. He moved as slowly and imperceptibly as he could, to find that his legs and arms were confined, and it smelled of ozone here -- recycled air -- not like a hospital at all. Aaron’s mouth was dry and his shoulders ached and there was a slight cramp in his right calf.

He struggled to remember what had happened. There had been the redhead in the bar, and something unexpected, something sharp -- he’d been stabbed -- or no, it was a needle. _Fuck. Fucking careless, Cross._

The room was silent except for a scritching noise on paper -- someone writing. Aaron kept stock still and struggled to recall brief snatches of conversation.

_”Didn’t recognize me. And we know from the earlier approach he didn’t know Agent-”_

_“Not responsible for this. I swear to you, there is no way.”_

_“Yeah, well.”_

_“Run tests on the blood samples through the database.”_

_“Which one?”_

_“All of them.”_

_“-sus Christ. Psychotic break, you think?”_

He cracked an eyelid and a face immediately loomed overhead, blocking the light. An average-looking face that had “government functionary” written all over if, and he looked slightly...familiar. If the guy in a tie was with Operation Outcome, or even some stray remnant of Treadstone trying to get information on Outcome, Aaron was well and truly fucked.

“You’re awake.”

“Where am I?” Aaron bit out.

“What do you remember?” the man asked him as he sat back down. “What’s your name?”

“I’ve been drugged,” Aaron managed. “And kidnapped. I’m not talking to you.”

The man in a blue tie leaned back in his chair and actually smiled at him. He had kind eyes. "Okay,” he said. “But you’re not going anywhere until you do.”

Aaron was silent for a moment, and the writing resumed.

“Why am I here?” he asked.

“Clint--” the man in the suit began.

Aaron shook his head. “That’s not my name.”

Suit stood. “Right. Now you’re Jake. Or James Kelly. Or Patrick Summers. Or Christopher Jones.” The man dropped three US passports on the hospital tray next to the bed and fanned them out. “Which is it?”

“I want a...lawyer,” Aaron said. Having taken in the room’s setup and the furniture, he gambled that they were now in-country and that this was a reasonable request for a captive to make, and Suit raised his eyebrows. “And I would like you to unshackle me. Please.”

“You know that’s not going to happen, because I know better than most what you’re capable of. So you should probably just try to answer my questions. What have you been doing for the past six months?”

Aaron breathed in through his nose as the man in the suit grabbed a folder from the counter near the bed, and placed a photo on top of the passports.

“This is you, at Jomo Kenyatta Airport. We know the woman is Marta Shearing. She’s missing.”

Another photograph. “Here you are in DC. And in Hanoi; this is from a CCTV cluster.” Another. “Seoul.”

“Who are you with?” Aaron asked. The photos...they would have to have a broad reach to pull up random street CCTV from _Hanoi_. “CIA? NSA?” Aaron hesitated. “Treadstone? Blackbriar?”

“What’s Blackbriar? Why don’t you tell me more about that?”

Aaron pressed his lips together.

Suit shook his head, then ran the pad of his palm over his own forehead. “Are you familiar with SHIELD?”

Aaron felt his pulse race and narrowed his eyes. If these guys were SHIELD, he might never leave this room. The man placed another photograph on the stack -- the redhead, in profile.

“Do you know this woman?” He asked.

“Yeah, she’s the bitch who drugged me in the bar. Does she work for SHIELD? Do you?”

The man hesitated before adding to the photographs. Aaron surveyed the image; it was a picture of him with the redhaired woman, the man in the suit on his other side. They were all smiling for the camera. They looked...like friends. Another photo appeared; he was sitting on the suit's desk, looking right at home there. But he didn't know this man, or the woman, either. 

Aaron was relieved. These people weren't with Outcome. _They just had the wrong guy._ He opened his mouth to tell the Suit that, but the man placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

“You work for SHIELD too, Clint,” he said softly. “You just don’t remember.”


	2. Chapter 2

Aaron squinted at the Suit and quickly weighed his options. He had clearly been mistaken for someone else. _Clint._ These people were favorably disposed towards Clint; they surely wouldn’t keep him shackled to a hospital bed for long, if they were sure he wouldn’t freak and flee.

Given the other government agencies that could have snatched him off that barstool, Aaron considered, this could have been much, much worse. Outcome had a burn notice out on him; he'd be on a slab instead of having a polite conversation in a room with a Klee print on the wall.

This...Clint had apparently been gone for _months._ And walking around with Aaron Cross’s face had become a very risky proposition during that time.

Aaron doubted the missing man was alive at this point.

He closed his eyes, waited for a moment, and then began to speak. “I uh...I woke up in Manila several months ago. I don’t have any memory of what occurred before that.” Aaron heard the man in the suit catch his breath. “People were after the woman with me; that’s all I know. I was able to...protect her. I don’t know where I got my tactical training, but if I worked for SHIELD, it must have been pretty decent, right? I mean, I, I just instinctively knew how to obtain forged passports and evade a tail, so.”

“Clint,” the man said, and Aaron blinked at the sympathetic tenor of his voice, the way his knuckles butted up against his forearm.

“I guess. I guess...that’s who I am if you say so. I don’t know, and I don’t even know if I can trust you, but I’ve been on the run and I...I thought maybe CIA or SEALS. What do you do, y’know? I did some looking online but when you don’t know your own name...” Aaron let the lie trail off, allowing his gaze to fall on the agent in the suit again.

“--and I just..." Aaron pulled at his arm restraints. "I don't get why this is necessary. Are you being straight with me? Please tell me I’m not really a fugitive or a rogue hitman or guilty of some shit I don't even recall.”

“You’re...” Suit shook his head. “No, you’re a field agent. You went through something pretty...well, there’ll be time to discuss that later, but the memory loss is probably down to post-traumatic stress.”

“Huh,” Aaron said, tilting his head. “Maybe forgetting isn’t so bad, then. Sorry; what should I call you?”

The blue-gray eyes flickered then, quickly. “Agent Phil Coulson. I’m your...your handler.”

“Could I please have a glass of water, Agent Coulson?”

*

Aaron was right; playing along meant the leather shackles came off his ankles and wrists, and he briefly considered dropping Coulson and making a break for it anyway, but he wasn’t sure where he was being held. He could still be in Korea. Or he could be in Sitka. He could even be on a freaking aircraft carrier...who knew? And there were cameras everywhere. So he decided to play the long game.

“Do you have any more pictures?” he asked. “Do you have my...case file?”

Shortly he found himself with a last name, _Barton_ , and situated in a locked debriefing room with one door, a two-way mirror, and a cheeseburger and fries. Coulson looked wary as he offered him a drink cup, taking off the lid and straw. Did he think Aaron would kill him with a drinking straw? Could the missing guy do that? Because that _was_ a coincidence. How did Aaron look exactly like a SHIELD agent with similar training who these people saw all the time, and not like a missing accountant from Dubuque?

He briefly wondered if Barton had undergone plastic surgery to look like him. That could have been part of Operation Outcome, or LARX maybe, because it could be beneficial to have an alibi agent: “ _No, this guy didn’t do it -- see, he was in...Dubuque._ ” Stranger things had occurred; Marta didn't have much of a clue about what Outcome had been about -- or even Aaron's name -- and she'd spent years looking after the subjects. But surely an agency handler would be aware if his asset had been a part of something like that. Years, Coulson had said. He’d known Barton for a long time, and they were tight. So Aaron’s voice and mannerisms had to be shockingly similar, and how the hell does that happen?

If Aaron hadn’t had decades of intact memories of his own, he’d probably start thinking he _was_ Clint Barton. Or that this was some kind of elaborate fuckin' setup.

But he’d learned to be pretty good at reading people and situations, he didn't smell lies on Coulson, and this was too wack to be anything but what it appeared to be. “Why are you keeping me cooped up?” he asked, munching. “Maybe if you let me see my quarters...my books and stuff...that would help jog my memory.”

Coulson kept his poker face on. “Not yet. We’re still evaluating the situation and you’re under observation for your own safety. You might have taken a knock on the head. We’re going to run some scans tomorrow.”

“Thought you said it was PTSD,” Aaron gave Coulson a dubious look. _Shit,_ he thought.There had been something else he’d heard when resurfacing. Something about tests. If they ran blood tests, DNA, prints...he likely didn’t have as much time as he thought.

“Well, we don’t know what happened, do we? You suddenly disappeared and now you don’t remember anything, or us, so...” Coulson tried for a smile and failed.

“Are my folks worried? My...do I have a girlfriend?” Aaron hadn’t seen a ring on Barton’s finger in the pictures, so he assumed if he was a field agent he didn’t really have time for entanglements, a lot like his own life, really. “But I guess you could have told them I was on a deep cover mission, huh? Oh god, is it the redhead? Are we...?” Aaron waved a french fry.

Coulson didn’t answer. He sat down and folded his hands together as Aaron sipped and wrinkled his nose at the contents of the cup -- plain iced tea. “Do I normally like this?”

The agent nodded, then looked away. “Yes, you normally do.”

*

Aaron spent the next few hours in the same room answering questions -- a psych eval that he tried to game; not hard, since he wasn’t a secret sociopath anyway, and he doubted Barton was either if he was a field agent. He filled out four SHIELD forms in triplicate, printing in a nondescript hand. He was brought a chicken caesar salad when he mentioned he was hungry again. Coulson brought him a Coke to wash it down. No straw.

*

“Look,” Aaron told the redhaired woman -- Natasha -- “I’m sorry I called you a bitch earlier. I know you were just doing your job.” He didn't know what Coulson had told her, but he suspected she'd been sitting somewhere and watching the feed from the room where he woke up.

“I really didn’t enjoy sedating you, Barton,” Natasha said with a slight smile across the table. “But I forgive you. This time.”

“Agent Coulson won’t let me go home. I’m pretty worn out. Where are we?”

“Yeah,” Natasha said slowly, evading the question. “We need to keep you here for a while. Hopefully things will start coming back.”

“So, you’re an agent too. What do we normally do? Counterintel, or...what?” Aaron leaned forward.

Her eyes narrowed. “We do what’s needed. You’re very skilled with weapons.”

Aaron nodded slowly. “Okay. What firearms, typically?”

“Bow. Crossbow.”

“Crossbow,” Aaron repeated hollowly. Well, he’d used one before in training and was handy enough with it; he could fake it if things went that far. If not...if not, well, he had the memory excuse. He wasn't sure that would fly, since he'd been able to do a lot of things a field agent with total amnesia wouldn't have managed. He cursed himself inwardly for not better concealing the passports. “Guns too, right?”

“Sure,” Natasha nodded. “And hand-to-hand. We...spar a lot.”

Aaron stretched and tilted back in his chair. “Is that what you call it?”

Natasha cocked her head at him.

Aaron shrugged. “Look, just tell me if it’s our anniversary next week so I don’t make an ass of myself and get jabbed with a needle again, okay?”

“No,” she said shortly, standing up and smoothing down her leather jacket. "It isn't."

Well, that had gone swimmingly.

*

Maria Hill and Phil Coulson sat in the conference room, the lab in Stark Tower on the secure comm screen. Clint's status -- the very fact he'd been recovered -- was being kept from SHIELD at large for now.

“Tony’s having the document samples run. Apparently he uses handwriting analysis when hiring,” Bruce said. “Based on some incident with industrial espionage once.”

“That’s weird,” Maria wrinkled her nose. “I would have thought that was a little bit...woo for Stark.”

“I heard that,” Tony piped up from somewhere out of camera range.

Bruce shrugged. “Everybody has a woo point, even scientific types. Lucky hat when your team’s on a winning streak, things like that.”

“Do you have a lucky hat, Banner?” Maria asked with a smirk.

“If I talked about it, the magic would be ruined, man,” Bruce laughed, then coughed into his hand at Phil’s sober, stop-fucking-around expression. “Alright, ran some preliminary labs. Blood type matches. DNA...still incomplete, but at this point we have a match, but you knew that already since you've been around Clint all day. There are a couple of chromosomal differences, but frankly, from the time Clint’s sample would have been cataloged, back when he was hired? Analysis has gotten a lot more detailed.”

Maria nodded, smiling. "So he can't be a life model decoy?”

Tony's background snort came over the feed. Everybody knew the tech wasn't good enough yet to fool anybody with ten feet of an LMD. 

“SHIELD doesn’t have Clint’s original DNA sample, just the record," Bruce continued. "Unless you have a vial of Clint’s blood lying around, so I can run a new test comparing that to this fresh sample. Or actually...hair would work. From a brush or comb. If you wanted to be sure.”

“I can get you a hair sample,” Coulson said quietly.

*

“Crazypants,” Tony told Bruce when the feed ended.

“I know. Clint doesn’t remember a damned thing.”

“No, I mean this predicament. It has brother from another mother planet written all over it.”

Bruce sat back on his stool, leaning into the lab table. “Loki’s imprisoned.”

“So? He knows magic. Which is mysterious.” Tony gestured with his fingers. “And even if he supposedly can’t do anything now, who’s to say he didn’t put an alien god whammy on Barton earlier to make him forget everything if the mind-control didn’t work out for whatever reason? It could be a fail-safe in case he remembered things he wasn’t supposed to, like Loki's weaknesses. Or, it could make him a double-agent. He could gather intel and phone it in psychically to Loki’s mental mainframe.”

“Hmm,” Bruce said. “If you’d suggested this a while back, I would have thought you were delusional.”

“Yeah, well, we saw Loki in action, didn’t we? A lot of things he did didn’t make a whole lot of sense at first. And then they sort of...”

“They’re keeping Clint at HQ, under tight observation,” Bruce pointed out. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Sure," Tony said. “I hope you’re right about that.” Bruce rolled his eyes. "So, you have a lucky hat?

"Annnnd, still not talking about it," Bruce said, turning back to his monitor.


	3. Chapter 3

_After the battle of Manhattan_ :

Clint Barton walked to the corner and pulled himself back onto the curb when a horn blared. He hadn’t been paying close attention, which was not...him, not at all. Maybe he could be forgiven for being preoccupied, though, if nothing else.

Coulson was home from the hospital; had been for four days. Clint could tell it hurt him to move, but Phil put on a cheerful front, as if it didn’t.

He almost hadn’t made it. And it had been Clint’s fault. He hadn’t been the one to drive a spear through Phil’s body, but it might as well have been. Phil was the one with the pallor and stitches and bottles of painkillers he shook into his palm when Clint wasn’t watching, but Clint was the one with the nightmares.

"It’s textbook PTSD,” Phil had said, pulling him close that morning with a bit-back wince.

“Yeah, I know,” Clint had said. He didn’t deserve to survive everything almost unscathed, with only bad thoughts and worse dreams in the aftermath. Hell, Stark had nightmares, too. And guilt...but that wasn’t much compared to three weeks in the ICU. It wasn’t much compared to almost bleeding out and nearly dying again on an operating table.

He’d only just moved in to Phil’s place, two weeks before the attack. They were still feeling their way into this new...thing they had that had been building for years.

Clint sat on the edge of the bed and reached for his jeans, then wedged his feet into a pair of boots. “I’m gonna go out for a walk. Maybe stop by the bodega and get some snacks for the game.” It was Saturday, and Phil liked college football.

“Okay,” Phil said sleepily, and Clint watched him close his eyes.

Outside in the bright morning sun, Clint Barton locked the door to the brownstone behind him, and pulled the hoodie over his hair. He went to the corner, turned, passed the bodega without a pause, and kept walking.

*

“Handwriting analysis came back inconclusive,” Tony told Bruce. "Given the circumstances. But hey, 'sensual idealist'. Now we know that much."

Bruce didn’t turn; his attention was fixed on his lab screens. “It’s woo, Tony.”

“Ha, okay.” Tony cleared his throat and muttered. “Lucky hat.”

Bruce squinted at the new chromosomal array on the projection, manipulated another line of data with his fingertips, pushed them together so that they overlapped, and re-read the name on the file, and then the file itself. “Check this out.”

Tony leaned over his shoulder, silently absorbing the data before dialing Coulson.

“Bruce has something here you need to see,” he said.

*

Twenty minutes later, Natasha Romanoff buckled into the navigator seat on a Quinjet bound for Nevada. She was unsurprised. She'd known the second she'd seen her target's wrist in the van behind the bar.

She'd wanted to let Coulson believe, though. Just for a while. 

*

“Kinda hot in here,” Aaron remarked, as Bruce took his blood pressure. He could feel a trickle of sweat trace a solo track down the center of his spine.

“It is,” Bruce nodded, damp beads dotting the skin along his hairline. “Air conditioning’s fritzed, but they’re working on it now. Sorry about that.”

“I’d like to go outside. I haven’t seen the sky in what, two days? Can we go somewhere with a window and maybe crack it?” It was gaining on fall...Aaron knew the the outside air had to be fresher.

Bruce pulled off the cuff and put his hands on his hips. “Tell you what. I’ll ask if that’s okay with Coulson. We’re almost done here anyway.”

“Good.” Instead of rolling down his sleeve, Aaron pushed the other up to match it. He’d ditched the sweater he’d been wearing in Korea when they’d captured him, but the shirt...a simple blue chambray button-up, wasn’t exactly airy. He could have done with a shower, too. "Hey, how did I get the code name Hawkeye? Big fan of M*A*S*H*?"

Bruce gave him a lopsided smile. “Leave those sleeves loose. Air’ll do you good later, but you’re also a little dehydrated.” He rolled over a metal stand. “I’ll hang a bag and get some fluids into you.”

“I’ve been drinking stuff,” Aaron groused, but offered his arm again obligingly, watching as Bruce expertly stuck in a needle and line, and affixed it to his wrist with stretchy blue tape.

“Okay. Just be patient, alright?” Bruce patted his shoulder and left the room -- the same room where he’d woken up and where he’d napped last evening. He didn’t have to check the metal-core door to know it was soundly locked. Aaron swung his legs up onto the hospital bed and tilted his head back into the pillow. The heat was making him feel draggy, so he closed his eyes.

*

“The Mrs kept his bedroom just the same, all these years,” Mr Kitsom told Natasha earlier that morning. “She liked to go and sit in there, sometimes. She passed on a while back, but I ain’t had the heart to change it. Plus, I got a bum leg. What am I gonna do, turn it into one of them home gyms?”

Natasha took in every detail of the room, like the author of the book on fallen war heroes she was pretending to be would do -- the corded brown bedspread on the sagging twin bed, a lonely red "2nd PLACE CROSS COUNTRY" ribbon pinned above a maple desk, and a bookshelf containing action figures and a neatly arranged selection of comic books -- some still in their plasticine wrappers. She flicked through them carefully and noticed that there was little dust present for a room Kenny’s father seemed not to care about. She pressed a button on her phone when he turned to surreptitiously straighten the bedcover. The phone beeped and Natasha answered, then smiled sheepishly at Mr Kitsom. “I’m so sorry...it’s the nanny and my daughter has the flu. I have to take this.”

“Reception’s no good here; you got to go to the corner,” he said, gesturing at the stop sign she could see from the window, and Natasha nodded apologetically and strode out.

“I’ll be right back, sir,” she said. When she got to the corner (the reception was fine in the house, but an excuse for privacy for the call was an unexpected boon.)

“Hey,” she said into her phone. “Fury. Kenny Kitsom has something major in common with Coulson.”

Five minutes later, Natasha sipped at the coffee Kenny’s father had offered and glanced around the living room. It had obviously benefited from a woman’s touch at some time, but that must have been back in the 1980s, judging from the rows of beribboned country blue ducks on the wallpaper border. She took in the aging stack of Reader’s Digests on the coffee table and then glanced back down at the file in her lap.

“So you say your son always wanted to join the Army?”

“Sure did. I was in Vietnam and it was no walk in the park, but that didn’t dissuade him any. See, he tried a few times but they didn’t want to take him. Imagine that. Desert Shield goin’ on and them turning down volunteers, but he kept tryin’ until they finally folded. That or some recruiter had a quota to fill that month.”

“Why wouldn’t they take him earlier?” Natasha asked.

“Well,” Mr Kitsom examined his hands as they clutched at the cane between his legs. “You oughta leave this out of your book, but I guess it can’t hurt him now. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. He didn’t pass the written tests.”

Natasha nodded. The ASVABs were designed to slot recruits into the best specialty for their skills, but they were also correlated with IQ tests. If a potential soldier scored too poorly in a given area, it didn’t only mean that he lacked an innate aptitude for electronics.

“But he was brave. He had heart, you know what I mean? Lot of good it did him in the end,” Kitsom said, his voice tight and rising. “He wasn’t ever gonna be a doctor or nothin’, but he was a good kid. Decent. He didn’t deserve to die like that. We loved that boy like he was our own.”

Tilting her head, Natasha leaned forward. “You mean Kenny wasn’t your biological son?”

“Nope. Adopted from a children’s home. He was just a baby.”

Natasha asked some follow-up questions, placed the photos he’d given her in an envelope, and left a card with her phony credentials behind, feeling rather sorry that there would be no book with a chapter on Pvt. Kitsom’s sacrifice in Iraq for his father to put in the center of that coffee table.

*

“I want to be there,” Coulson said. “He trusts me.”

“We don’t know that for sure, and you’re way too close to this,” Fury warned, folding his arms. There’s no time to pull Marta Shearing in from Auckland, but we have a team on standby in case we have to link up video based on what we get out of the interview. Hill’s going in, with Rogers.”

“Steve?” Coulson asked. “He doesn’t remember Steve. Or...” Coulson closed his eyes. “He doesn’t even _know_ Steve.”

“We have a protocol for this; you know that.” Fury said, indicating that Coulson should sit down with him in front of the monitor. “So let’s stick to it.”

*

SP-117, and what it became after SHIELD’s scientists perfected the formula, was a truth drug -- a serum like sodium pentothal -- but different. Sodium pentothal was a barbiturate, used to induce medical comas. There were risks if the dose was off, even if it did make interrogation subjects chatty and helped them recall memories they hadn’t even known they’d repressed.

It was that latter use that made SHIELD’s proprietary narcoanalytic serum particularly useful. SP-117 and other truth drugs made people temporarily lose cortical control; they didn’t censor what they said, but that didn’t mean it was the truth, either...drunks can lie too, after all. But the refined version was much better at getting to the truth, made the subject regress like hypnotism could and become very suggestible, and he or she would completely blank the interrogation afterward. There were no lasting side effects.

It worked especially well when the subject was too warm -- they'd discovered that by happy coincidence in Puente Antiguo -- and questioned by someone to whom they were unlikely to lie. Administer the drug and get a terrorist’s mama in front of him or explain to him that he was in paradise and he’d tell you everything, including where he’d bought his underpants and the last time he’d changed them.

 

SHIELD had successfully used its truth drug to foil four global terror attacks this year alone.

*

“I’m hot,” Aaron complained to Bruce when he returned.

“I know,” Bruce said soothingly. “I brought some people to see you. This is Maria,” he gestured at Hill, “and this is Cap.” Steve moved closer to where Aaron reclined on the bed and extended a hand.

“ _Captain?"_ Aaron said, wonder in his voice. “I read the news about the attack, but the government lies. Maybe not as much in your day, but now they do, all the time. I don't want any part of that. No more.”

“So you know who I am?” Steve asked quietly as Bruce slipped out of the room.

“You’re Captain America,” Aaron says with the hint of a smile. “Steve Rogers. I used to have your comics. I wanted to be like you, when I was a kid. My dad said it was stupid, that you were just some actor and the stories were made-up. But I wanted to serve my country. He fought in a war because he got drafted, and he said heroism was bullshit and surviving was the goal. I bet he was pissed when the Army told him I died in Iraq. He always said I was a failure. I felt bad for my mom, though.”

“Yeah?” Steve leaned in. “Well, I’m here. I survived, just like you did. And you know my comics said you should always tell the truth.”

“I don’t want to lie, Captain,” Aaron said solemnly. “Not unless I have to, not unless it’s life or death.”

“That’s...good,” Steve said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “You should always tell the truth.” Maria nudged him and he gave her an exasperated look before turning back to Aaron. “What’s your name? Your real name.”

“I have a lot of names,” Aaron said, then shook his head. "I have a lot of passports I use with different names. I used to be Kenneth Kitsom. Before.”

“Before what?”

“Before Outcome. Before the Army. Now Kenny is dead and my name is Aaron Cross.”

“Can you tell me what Outcome is?” Maria asked, and Aaron blinked at her, puzzled, as if he’d forgotten she was there.

“It’s okay, Aaron,” Steve urged. “You can trust her. You can say.”

“They took me into the program. Outcome. I was in the Army, and I was injured, and they said they could make me a better soldier,” a smile slid over Aaron’s features. “I was afraid, but I thought of you, Cap. The Army didn’t want you either, but you were always so brave. You let them experiment on you, and everything worked out. So I said yes. I gave myself to the program.”

Steve looked taken aback as Aaron continued. “There was a regimen of pills, greens and blues, and I had to take them every day, and go in for periodic tests. They made me stronger, improved my reflexes. Made me healthier. Smarter, even.”

“Who is Marta Shearing?” Maria asked, although she had a good idea by now.

“Marta...” Aaron trailed off, smiling slightly again. “She was my doctor; she monitored my progress.” His expression clouded. “Then the agency -- I have a pretty good idea on whose orders -- killed everybody in the lab and she had to run. And there were no more pills, and I didn’t want to regress; would have rather died for real.” Aaron bit his lip.

I took her...” he looked unsure, agitated, and Steve nodded at him encouragingly. “I took her away, and she helped me. With injections so I didn’t need the pills. And I got sick, almost died, but I’m fine. Outcome worked after all. But they still want to take her out, along with me, and cover it all up. I don’t know why. I’m trying to find out _why_. I was a good agent. It _worked_. I think I love her, but I don’t know if it’s good for her if I do. If it’s safe. So I’m trying to stop.”

Steve looked up at the cameras. “It’s okay, Aaron. I’m sure she’s safe.”

“Yeah,” Aaron said, closing his eyes. “I’m still hot, Captain. Tired now. Going back to sleep.”

“Not yet,” Steve said, jostling Aaron’s knee. “It’s very important that you tell us what happened to Clint Barton.”

“I don’t know,” Aaron said. “I don’t know anything about him, except that I look like him and sound like him and maybe if I let you think...maybe if you...maybe you won’t turn me over to them. To the agency. I’m going to escape, though, as soon as you let me go outside,” Aaron said calmly. “I’ll have to move Marta again, since you’ve probably found her. Part of me doesn’t want to go, though. I feel safer here than I did looking over my shoulder, even though I don’t trust SHIELD."

Maria pursed her lips. “Could this agency -- the one responsible for Outcome -- have Barton, and believe that he’s you?”

Aaron shrugged against the mattress. “Sure. It's pretty likely, I think, since he didn't know to hide like I've had to. Hope not, though, because if _they_ found him, he’s dead for sure.”

Steve breathed out. “Clint is brave, just like you are, Aaron. And he’s very skilled. I’ll bet--”

“I’ve heard enough,” Coulson said from the monitoring room, switching off the sound. He pressed a shaky hand to his mouth.

“Keep him awake and talking,” Fury intoned into the comm linked to Maria and Steve’s earpieces. “Find out what you can about Outcome and the agency. Where their headquarters is, if he knows, and that lab, and safehouses, I want names; get everything he can tell you.”

He turned to Coulson. “If they have Clint, we’re going to get him back.”


	4. Chapter 4

The archer picked up a box of blunt target points and hefted them from hand to hand before shoving them in the cargo pocket of his pants. He’d spend the rest of the afternoon aiming at a discarded steering wheel cover hooked into a hill of dirt with a coat hanger.

He’d already wasted too many arrows shooting them into the falls, but it had been satisfying, like pulling the petals off of a daisy.

_Loves me, loves me not._

There was a finite number remaining in his quiver. He could obtain more, but hadn’t bothered. Going from eighteen down to seven made him feel lighter somehow, more compact. If (when) he got down to two, then one, then nothing, what would he do? Shove the empty quiver into a Hefty bag and stow it in the dusty closet, or raise it over his head and heave it into the deafening rush of water below? Would he watch it disappear or turn and walk away from the edge?

Would he say goodbye?

*

Aaron blinked his way out of a hazy dream. The redhead sat in the chair in the corner, tapping at a tablet.

“Hi,” he croaked. “Natasha.”

“Hey there,” she replied, her gaze flicking up to meet his before she rose and approached the bed.

“I need to piss,” he said, with a wince. The cuffs were back on.

“I’ll get someone to take you, Aaron. Or do you prefer to be called Kenny?” She pursed her lips. “I’ve been to see your dear old dad.”

Aaron paused for a long moment. “How is he?”

“Sad, I think,” she said. “He misses you.”

Aaron scraped his teeth against his bottom lip. “When?”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “I knew when we took you.” She poked a finger at his restrained wrist. “My teeth marks are missing.”

“Whoa,” Aaron raised an eyebrow. “Biter.”

She shrugged. “Long story.”

“I don’t know where Barton is,” Aaron muttered.

“We know. Truth serum.”

That probably explained the hallucinations, or the dream, or whatever that was, and it definitely explained the pounding headache. Aaron let out a heavy gust of breath. “I didn’t know what else to do.” He’d had to lie, to protect himself. All that was left was to rely on their mercy, now that they’d heard whatever he’d told them under juice. The only government secrets he was privy to now were about himself; it wasn’t like he could spill troop movements.

Natasha shrugged again. “You gave us some information about this shadow organization that worked on...you. But we can’t find any physical evidence. The facilities belong to a university. They smell like fresh paint and earnest doctoral candidates.”

“Yet clearly they do exist. Hey, c’mon, let me free,” Aaron said, tugging his arm against the hospital bed rail. “I’m not interested in hurting anybody. I’m not violent. Well, not under normal circumstances that don’t include being threatened with death. Did you ask me about that?”

“You underwent behavioral conditioning.”

Jesus, he’d sung like a bird, obviously. “Yeah, so I could be a spy,” Aaron spit out. “For my country, same as you. I’ll help you. Maybe I can help you.”

“You think Clint Barton is dead,” Natasha stated bluntly.

Aaron squinted, studying her impassive face. “Yeah. Probably.”

She crossed her arms over the bedside bar. “We have Marta Shearing,” she said.

“Here?” Aaron felt a hard, cold ball of fear settle in the pit of his stomach. He’d been able to keep it together so far, Marta, taken from her lab on the other side of the world - she had to be scared half to death.

He didn’t have anything to lose anymore, except Marta.

“At a secure location,” Natasha said, picking up the tablet and a binder on the chair and moving towards the door. “She’s in no danger. As long as you cooperate.”

*

“What am I looking at?” Marta wrapped the loose-fitting loaner sweatshirt tighter around her sides as she leaned forward.

“DNA comparison,” Bruce said, adjusting his glasses and pointing at the two projections before them. “Clint Barton.” He gestured to their right. “Aaron Cross.”

“How is this possible?” Marta squinted at the displays. “Aaron’s not a twin.”

“Yeah, Clint didn’t think he was either, as far as anybody knows,” Tony shouldered himself between them and offered a black coffee mug to Marta, then took a sip from his own. “SHIELD certainly had no clue. No surprise there.”

Bruce cleared his throat.“Records show that-”

“I mean, he wasn’t a part of the twin studies,” Marta interrupted “There were twins in the program -- something like seven individual participants. Designated under Helix QTL3.”

“Was there a space in there?” Tony asked, edging forward to tap at a keyboard and and the air simultaneously.

Marta thought for a moment, then nodded as he turned. “I think so. Yeah. There were a number of twins who had been separated from their siblings at birth because of adoptions and circumstance. Have you heard of the Neubauer study? Siblings raised by different sets of parents? The personality similarities?”

Bruce coughed. “The subjects had no idea they even had a twin. Highly unethical.” 

“There was supposed to be,” Marta gulped her coffee, which was, thankfully, steaming hot. ”...informed consent, and there were twins used in the research because of a control process for comparison. We were instructed not to discuss anything outside the tests and process with the subjects, so...”

“Unethical,” Bruce repeated.

“Yeah, I get that,” Marta snapped. “I actually trusted my supervisors, who were respected professionals, most of whom are now dead. We were supposed to be making a difference. Helping people. Naive of me, I know.”

“And bingo was her name-o,” Tony cut in with a squeeze of Bruce’s shoulder, covering the DNA sequences floating in midair with a set of text files. “Another successful hack. Do you recognize these names?”

She looked over the lists. “Some. Camp. Gordon. Garcia. Wilson...” she ticked off the other names, and then shook her head. “See? Cross isn’t there.”

“Kitsom,” Bruce said, “Is the name Aaron grew up with.”

 

Tony enlarged one line of the file with a swipe of his fingers.

`Kitsom, Kenneth. Subject XJ856`

*

After being bundled into a dark van and transported past Times Square through busy streets and into a parking garage and a freight elevator, Aaron was beyond relieved to see Marta perched on a chair facing the Chrysler building.

“What did they do to you?” Aaron hissed quietly as he pulled up the adjoining seat. Marta had dark circles under her eyes and looked worried, but otherwise unhurt.

“Nothing,” she replied. “I’m okay. They’re...” she waved a hand.

“They kidnapped me.”

“Well, they didn’t kidnap _me_. They asked me to come.”

“That’s novel. That’s a...novel way of doing things. Maybe if I’d been _asked_ to help them find their guy instead of drugged and transported against my will and locked up for the better part of a week...” Aaron ran a hand through his still-damp hair. He’d been allowed to shower and was dressed in hospital scrubs while his own clothes were being laundered, presumably. Marta was wearing what looked like a nightgown over pink leggings and a navy blue SHIELD logo sweatshirt that was three sizes too big. He reached out and clasped her shoulder, dragged a thumb over her bared collarbone. “You should have disavowed-”

“Right, because they’d believe I’d never heard of you when they have video of us. Together. On three continents. Tony Stark recovered the Outcome burn files.”

Aaron sat back in his seat, looking defeated.

“Look, Aaron,” Marta said, her voice rising as he lifted his eyes to hers. “Look. Bruce Banner is investigating this. Do you have any...he’d be the last person to collaborate with Outcome or LARX or the goddamn Army.”

“Well, I don’t know who the fuck he is,” Aaron said, then lowered his voice when the agent, Coulson, looked their way from his spot on the other side of the atrium.

Aaron saw Marta was trembling. “Did they threaten you?”

“No, they did not.”

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m tired,” She smiled wanly. “And cold. It’s a different season here. Aaron, I’m fine. They’re not going to kill you. Or me. They just want their agent back.”

“Dead,” Aaron said bluntly. “Has to be. You think some LARX asset didn’t burn Barton? They’d assume he’s me. They didn’t stop to ask a lot of questions the last time we encountered them, if you’ll recall.”

“I don’t think he’s dead,” Marta said. “Because the Outcome team knew you had a twin brother.”

*

* * *

The Neubauer study [is real](http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/w/wright-twins.html)


	5. Chapter 5

When Clint Barton and Kenneth Kitsom had been small, before they were called Clint or Kenneth, their birth parents died in a car accident. Deemed ideal subjects for a new government-sponsored twin study, they were separated and sent to different homes for orphans in two different states.

The plan, as near as Natasha and Bruce could determine from the piles of hacked documents Tony had uncovered and that they were poring over while chugging their respective Red Bull and hot tea, was for each to be raised institutionally by staff hand-selected by the study’s string-pullers, and then to be adopted later, also by hand-selected parents.

“It was then,” Bruce said dramatically, “that they were each to be raised in the way of the Samurai. Or the way of some random branch of the CIA, anyway.”

Natasha crumpled her can and lobbed it into the recycling bin. “It’s nice to know the Russians weren’t the only ones playing God, I suppose.”

“It’s like we all won the shitty childhood sweepstakes,” Bruce nodded.

Natasha smiled back at him. “I always throw away those Publisher’s Clearing House envelopes, even though I like magazines.”

“I like the round ones on Lewis guns,” Tony said, sailing in and planting a punch on Bruce’s arm. “They’re so...round. Triumph of design, really.”

“I was thinking of Marie Claire. They have interesting articles sometimes, And also, the latest fashions. Two birds, one stone.” Natasha said.

“I’m in Cigar Aficionado this month,” Tony announced, lips bending into an anything-but-modest smirk. “I invented a vibranium-lined humidor, and you would not _believe_ how fucking virgin-thigh-roll fresh these completely illegal Cubans in my workshop are. Worship me.”

“I love a good Cuban,” Natasha muttered. Bruce gave her a look that said _let’s _and they followed Tony as he walked backwards, beckoning with both hands.__

__*_ _

__In the 1970s, the orphanage housing Clint had come under investigation by the state for poor management and the children had been scattered. And the little boy who would become Kenneth wasn’t quite a duplicate of his twin. His early development was slow. He was weaker and smaller and his IQ was below average, and a part-time aide in the home's baby unit with no children of her own took a shine to him. Kenny was “unofficially” adopted by Mr and Mrs Kitsom. Existing orders at the state home forbid adoption without approval from a wing of a government agency, but Mrs Kitsom brought him home anyway, because she really didn’t give a damn. The government agency didn’t care either; Kenny was substandard and not worth studying._ _

__The study’s organizers dismissed both Kenny and Clint after that. Kenny only came back on the radar when his second enlistment attempt rang an alarm bell at Operation Outcome headquarters._ _

__One thing Kenny had learned well as a child was “the drill”; his father made him promise to always list the state home as his residence, and he dutifully did so as an enlistee and when he was being interviewed by Outcome. He had been illegally “adopted,” after all. Even after all those years, Mr Kitsom thought the law might turn up someday and “get funny about it.”_ _

__When Aaron Cross said goodbye to his old life, the last thing he’d done was list the Kitsoms as his next of kin. He figured they could use the life insurance to pay his mother’s medical bills._ _

__*_ _

__Clint Barton had two sets of alternative identification documents SHIELD had never known about. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them; he certainly trusted Coulson, after all. With his life._ _

__With his heart, even._ _

__But a guy could never be too careful._ _

__When Clint had two arrows left, he moved on again, pulling out a battered leather briefcase he’d retrieved from a safety deposit box in a small town bank on the way to the Falls and decided on a name; Brett Jersin. And then he applied for a job in the city parks department. He spent the majority of his first two weeks sawing off dead tree limbs and applying pesticide to saplings._ _

__It was dull, but it was an outdoor job, and blessedly free of paperwork. He had enough money socked away for a nice place of his own,, but he lived within his employed means by finding housemates looking for a third on Craigslist. That hadn’t meant paperwork either -- just a handshake and a promise to cover one-third of the rent along with free utilities in exchange for the smallest bedroom, so it was _perfect._ SHIELD wasn't going to look for him upstate, of all places._ _

__Clint was very much aware of the sorts of data SHIELD monitored, and city employee rosters were not among them, nor were traffic camera captures._ _

__Unfortunately, that was not true of what remained of Outcome, which happened to be looking for the faceprint of missing agent Aaron Cross, which is why Clint fell asleep behind the wheel of a bucket truck one Tuesday afternoon after lunch and woke up in a room not unlike the one in which Aaron had been held after Natasha picked him up in South Korea. It happened two days after Clint had run a red light on Lockport Street in a municipal vehicle._ _

__“Look,” Clint told the room’s hidden camera. “I flaked, but I’m not under any obligation to you.”_ _

__Coulson probably wouldn’t required to be back on the job so soon after the injury, _which was all Clint’s fucking fault in the first goddamned place,_ Clint thought, but he wouldn’t put it past him to be there for Clint’s interrogation, torturing himself._ _

__“I take my security clearance seriously, okay? And the non-disclosure and the non-compete clauses. I’m not gonna talk, and I’m not in the global defense business anymore, but I've outlived my usefulness, so you can just let me go the fuck back to my life and forget you ever met me and we’ll call it a wash. That work for you?”_ _

__The door opened and a suit walked in. Well, it would be a suit, but he’d lost the coat and rolled his sleeves up to be more approachable, Clint figured._ _

__It wasn’t Coulson, or anybody else Clint recognized. Not shocking, since a stranger was probably protocol in these situations, if these situations ever happened. SHIELD was big, there were tons of people who probably needed something to do after the tesseract research facility was cratered. Which was also partially Clint’s fucking fault. He sighed._ _

__“Welcome home, Mr Cross,” the man said, before he drew back one bared arm and clocked Clint with a sapper, knocking him out again._ _


	6. Chapter 6

He’d been moved. Clint woke up in a cinderblock cell and spent the day there, if it was, in fact, daytime. It felt like it, though there were no windows for proof. There were a stainless steel sink and toilet in the corner and a built-in bench for sleeping and sitting, and a plastic cup for water. His belt was gone and it’d be pretty hard to hang himself with his pants if he’d wanted to, since there wasn’t anything to loop them over. This place was obviously designed to hold prisoners, but his presence was unplanned; he could tell because of the makeshift attempt at food: a pile of energy bars with individual price stickers and a bag of generic-label teriyaki jerky. This stuff had come from a goddamned gas station.

They weren’t SHIELD. Whoever they were, whoever had cornered him like this, pulled him of the street, well, SHIELD _would_ do that, but there was no reason to rough up an AWOL agent. He’d just fucked off, not gone rogue. He pressed his fingers against his side, felt bruised ribs, and gave a low wince. Nothing was broken, and he felt glad about that, even though maybe he deserved a broken rib or four. 

Maybe "Mr Cross" did, too. He didn't know what kind of game this was, but maybe he had a second code name Coulson hadn't shared with him. Probably inter-agency secrecy protocol. Fun.

The seals on the energy bars were intact; Clint squeezed each by the wrapper to test them. He opened one, leaned against a white-painted wall, and chewed slowly, pissed off.

*

Aaron listened, contemplative and a little amused, as Marta and Bruce Banner animatedly discussed a “very promising” paper she’d published. Sure, he wasn’t...the way he used to be, but they were talking obscure shit he didn’t have to care about, and he tuned out the words and watched their body language instead. Aaron barely knew Banner, but he’d picked up that this scientist with glasses who needed a haircut was the same person, if you could call it a person, as the behemoth who’d been a part of repelling that attack here in Manhattan. A hero, basically. 

It looked like Banner really didn’t want the job. Aaron could sympathize. He’d been changed too, but things had worked out for him in the end physically, thanks to Marta. He was just fortunate that Outcome hadn’t tried whatever the hell had happened to change Banner into a the jolly green giant as part of the Program, because hell if he would have known any different before it was too late. He sipped his Coke and finished his pizza. Just in time, as it happened; the smartphone he’d been given by Tony Stark beeped and summoned him to a meeting in a conference room downstairs. He waved his phone at Marta and mouthed “meeting” at her, and she flashed him a quick smile and nodded at whatever Banner had been saying.

God, he loved her.

*

_Niagara Falls_

Natasha knocked on the door of the grey clapboard house on Ferry Avenue. There was no answer, and the doorbell was apparently disabled. Still, she could hear sounds of activity inside, likely a television. She looked down at her cover getup; dark jeans, sheepskin-topped boots, and a Buffalo Bills sweatshirt.

NSA visual data trawl had popped Clint’s picture onto JARVIS’s search screens, because of course Tony had hacked -- “Tapped, Natasha. This is a tap, not a hack, though it’s an _awesome_ hack” -- the NSA database. After an argumentative conversation with Steve about whether JARVIS was the hacker or Tony, they’d ID’ed the city truck, traced Brett Jersin to Niagara Falls, and a few minutes of conversation with a co-worker who’d picked him up for work a few times,“Yeah, he’d better be in tomorrow, ‘cause he sure didn’t call in and we had to fetch the truck where he left it,” had yielded an address. 

Out of politeness, Natasha knocked again. She had a cover story ready, not to mention four hidden weapons if met with resistance, but the activity in the house didn’t sound menacing. If Clint was sitting there playing hooky and watching a movie, she was seriously going to make him pay.

“Come in. Jesus!” rang an irritated voice, and Natasha opened the door and edged into the house. She followed the sounds down a hall to a living room, and found a pair of men in their late twenties immersed in a first-person-shooter. She cleared her throat, the dark-haired one in a baseball cap looked up and dropped his controller, and she heard a death gasp from the speakers. 

“Owned, bitch!” crowed the other player before he looked up, and Natasha tucked a hand into her pocket and leaned a shoulder against the doorway.

“Is Brett home?” she asked. 

“No, he hasn’t been around,” the guy in the baseball cap said. “I’m Chris, and this is Kyle. How _you_ doin’?”

Natasha bit down on her worry. She’d expected to find a Kyle Smith and Christopher Percerello living here, and that was a sight better than finding them dead along with Clint, but these two dolts weren’t responsible for anything illegal besides maybe possessing a lid of pot. “When did you see him last?” she asked.

“Couple days,” Chris said. “He’s gone overnight sometimes.” Kyle elbowed him. “I mean, he goes camping.”

“You his, uh, girlfriend?” Kyle squinted at her, eyes dropping to her chest.

“No,” Natasha narrowed her own eyes. “His sister. He hasn’t called, and he was supposed to come down for our granddad’s birthday.”

Kyle shrugged. “Like he said, dude disappears. What was it, like, Wednesday night we saw him last?”

“Thursday,” Chris rubbed his bearded chin. “Before work. I don’t know if he took his camping gear with him, though.”

“Nah. Tent’s in the garage. I moved it to pull out the cooler," Kyle said, toeing a red Coleman cooler with his sneaker. 

Natasha fought the desire to roll her eyes. _Hе дай Бог_ they should have to pause their game and walk 20 feet to get a beer. She tilted her head. “Can I just please check to see if he packed a bag? When he didn't show up we just got worried...”

Chris waved a hand towards the hall stair. “Go ahead. Room at the end of the upstairs hallway.” 

Natasha nodded and climbed the stairs, avoiding a stray tube sock and a crushed beer can someone had dropped. She knew Clint wouldn’t have minded the whole traditional college experience...maybe that was why he’d taken a room in what appeared to be an aged-up frat house. Despite that, she knew the obvious reason was he wanted his alias kept off the lease and roommates who wouldn’t keep tabs on him. He was hiding. She took a breath and opened the door to Clint’s bedroom. 

The surroundings were spartan; his bed bore a plaid comforter and there was a stack of paperbacks next to it, along with a phone charger. The closet held clothes she didn’t recognize, except for one shirt Clint wore all the time when he was off duty, the one Coulson had said he'd been wearing when he'd left their place. She pulled up the sleeve and pressed her face to it. Yes, it smelled like him. She closed her eyes for a moment, breathed in again.

Natasha dropped to the floor and peered under the double bed; there was a black plastic bag there, and when her hand closed around it, she knew exactly what it was; a small sport quiver. Unwrapping it, she found two arrows. She sat at the edge of the bed and clasped them tight, then pulled the shirt of the hanger and stuck it into the bag. 

“Like, I’m pretty sure she’s not Brett’s sister,” she could hear Chris say as she descended the stairs, and paused at the landing. “He never mentioned a sister.”

“He never mentioned _shit_ ,” Kyle said. “Dude’s a closed book.”

“Looks nothing like him. Probably some psycho-ex stalker.”

“Yeah, whatever. I’d bang her,” Kyle replied. “It’d be like, unnhhh, unnnhh, baby.” Natasha huffed silently, imagining the wishful hip-thrusting he had to be doing.

“Never stick your dick in crazy, bro.”

Natasha fought the urge to walk in and nail Kyle’s sleeve to the pleather sofa with a well-aimed Ziel throwing knive, but instead she set the bag on the stairs, shuffled her feet loudly on the lower landing and stepped back into the room.

“Hey, no joy, but can you do me a huge favor?” Natasha smiled winningly at both men.

“Yeah,” Chris breathed. 

“Just...when Brett gets back, can you tell him to call Tasha?” She waited for a nod from Kyle. “Tell him nobody’s mad that he didn’t show up; we just want to see him.”

“Right,” Kyle agreed, and Natasha left, grabbing the bag on the way out.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said I'd never abandon an WIP, and I meant it! :)
> 
> One more chapter follows this one. Thanks again for reading!

“Any other places you recall?” Steve Rogers asked him, and Aaron shook his head. He’d trained in a variety of locations, but none had been hard-shell permanent facilities, and no evidence had been left behind. The trailer in the woods in Maryland was history. The one Treadstone address he had in Manhattan was a dead end. He’d believe he was telling lies himself if he didn’t know better.

Rogers blew out a sigh and leaned back in his chair, and Aaron pressed his lips together. Captain America, in the flesh. Looking for his teammate. 

Nobody would have looked for Aaron if he’d been kidnapped, or if that drone had iced him in the snowy woods. Nobody who didn’t want him for a mission or dead, at least. Actually, “he” _had_ been kidnapped, and fuckin’...well, they probably had his double anyway, for all the good that’d do. He shook his head.

“What is it? You remember something?” Rogers tilted a brow. 

“No, just…” Aaron slid his palms over the hard edge of the tabletop. “He’s lucky, you know. Clint. Seems like you’re kind of a, a family.”

“Yeah,” Rogers’ voice was rough. “I guess we are.”

*

Coulson sat at his desk. It was perfect, tidy, everything at sharp right angles except two folders and a crumpled paper bag. Natasha had passed the bag over when she’d returned from upstate and he’d confirmed with a glance inside that it was Clint’s shirt.

“Yes. Thank you, agent,” he’d said after clearing his throat, before she shut the door with a soft click.

*

Rogers looked up and Aaron turned at the sudden bustle of activity behind him; rushing personnel, the squawk of a comm. 

“Cap,” said the woman Aaron now knew as Maria Hill. “Fury called in a favor. We have a location. Suit up.”

Rogers stood. “On it.” He glanced down at Aaron, who rose from his chair, and then at Hill. “He’s feeling better. You are, aren’t you?” Aaron nodded at that.

“Good,” Hill answered, handing Aaron a dark bundle of clothing. “We’re down a man. Suit up, Cross; rest of the gear’s in the locker room and the armory. Paperwork later.” Aaron’s hands closed around the bundle to keep it from falling to the floor as she stepped to the side. “We know they’ll fit, right?”

Aaron nodded and followed Rogers. Out of the common room area, both stripped hurriedly and Aaron pulled on black trousers, an undershirt and vest. Rogers, no, shit, _not_ Steve Rogers anymore, _Captain fucking America_ , in full red, white and blue, gave him a nod and a tight smile when he donned a skullcap. Aaron nodded back.

At the other end of the spectrum, Agent Coulson looked right through him as they passed.

He had time to give Marta a hasty embrace before he rushed to the jet with the rest of the team, _the fucking Avengers._

There was no way he was going to let them down. Or his goddamned brother either.

 

 

A deafening grinding noise brought Clint out of the huddled ball he lay in on the unyielding bench and to his feet; one of the walls was pulling away from the other three, and then it slid to the side, revealing a flat metal panel and a window. Lights flickered behind it, and Clint faced two figures behind the glass. No doubt it was bulletproof, but his fists clenched anyway.

“Why am I here?” he asked.

“Pfft,” said the taller figure, the man from before with the sapper. “I think you know.”

“Actually, I really don’t,” Clint persisted. "Why don't you enlighten me?" There was a metallic noise as the air vents above flicked open wider, and he glanced at the source of the sound, clenching down on his panic.

“Right now you’re getting the standard mix of recycled air. But you know how easy it is it to change that mix, don’t you? You, my old friend, are no longer necessary.”

Clint’s jaw tightened around his silence. 

“But if you tell us where to find the woman, and anyone else you talked to, maybe we’ll let you keep breathing.”

“Byer,” the other man said in a warning tone.

“Maybe the media? Anything supposed to hit FedEx if you go missing?” Byer continued. “Bourne?”

“ _Byer_ ,” hissed the man in the grey suit.

“No, scratch that. We’ll definitely let you live no matter what. New paperwork, little house on a lake in Bulgaria. How’s that? Just lay some truth on us, Cross.”

Clint was confused, and little sleep had nothing to do with it. Either these suited goons -- he didn’t think they were SHIELD, but another agency acting under aegis of the Council, no doubt -- were fucking with his head on purpose, or Loki’d thrown some other tasks at him (and an alias?) that he couldn’t even recall. Which was certainly possible. Nothing could really surprise Clint Barton anymore.

“Just give me the fucking confession,” he barked. “I’ll sign whatever. But I don't know where ‘the woman’ is. I didn’t talk to ‘Bourne’. Uh...” Jason Bourne? Bourne was a myth agents told their baby agents about, wasn't he? Clint gambled that this was all so much hot air. A test, maybe. After all, he was worth more alive, even if he was a liability to SHIELD. "You can control any fallout from the press." 

“You're right, we can.” Byer paused. “Okay, Aaron. Okay.” He closed his microphone. The vents creaked again and Clint heard a low hiss from the ceiling, just before everything went black.

*

This was what supposedly happened when you died, right? Only you were supposed to rise above your body and see it lying lifeless on the corrugated metal floor of the Quinjet, not wake up with metal biting into your back, with Coulson gripping one hand and your eyes tearing up and bile in your throat, Natasha’s hair tickling your forehead as she bent overhead holding something plastic to your face, that you had to push away in a panic. But Clint saw himself anyway, crouching a few feet away and staring back at him. 

If this was an after-death experience, it was pretty fucked-up.

“I’m gonna puke,” Clint managed, and Natasha pushed him up by the back of his neck. 

“Not on me you’re not, asshole,” she cautioned, but her tone was fond. He pulled himself up on one elbow, and shook his head; the urge had passed. Clint blinked, but he still saw himself. 

“Am I...dead?”

“No, Clint,” Coulson said. “You’re just fine.”

“No, I’m not friggin' fine, Coulson. I’m hallucinating,” Clint husked as Phil's hand tightened around his, and he watched himself start to laugh. 

“Um,” the other Clint said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have been here when you came around.”

“Yeah, good point, pack a parachute,” Natasha said, and other him rolled his eyes. Clint looked at her, confused, then back at...himself.

“I’m sorry,” said the other Clint, holding out a hand. “We haven’t been formally introduced. I suppose you didn’t know you had a twin either. I’m Aaron Cross.”

“A twin,” Clint said haltingly. _Cross._ He shook the other man’s hand. Solid. Not a hallucination. Not him, either. 

“I’m clearly the smart one,” Aaron replied.

Clint coughed. “I’m better looking.”

“Oh god, they’re both smartasses,” Bruce Banner said from behind him, and Clint twisted to see him, hair mussed, buckled into a seat and shirtless but for the stretchable polymer pants Stark had formulated for him. Things started snapping into place. He remembered the gas coming from the vents and the roar. It’d been the Hulk. Just in time.

“Who’s Byer?” Clint asked.

“Former handler of mine. Wants me dead,” Aaron replied.

“So, mistaken identity,” said Clint. “Didn’t seem like they wanted to keep you alive, no.”

“Well, SHIELD kidnapped me too,” Aaron said. He edged closer. “Came all the way to South Korea and Red here knocked me out. Thought I was you. But in your case, people care what happens to you.” 

Clint peered at Natasha, who shrugged with one shoulder. He still couldn’t look at Coulson, even though he hadn’t let go of Clint’s hand; if anything, his grip had tightened. He’d run. He’d run from everyone, and everyone knew. He sagged back against Natasha’s thighs.

“Get some rest, Clint,” he heard Phil say, as he felt his eyelids droop.

**Author's Note:**

> [Cue music!](http://youtu.be/7rMV-rWaU-c)
> 
> I know it's been ages since the last update, but I'm still working on this story. Thanks for being patient!


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